Fibre reinforced polymers are high performance materials obtained from thermoset resins and a continuous fibre reinforcement that can be found in battery casing at different sublevels (modules, pack), and that are, as of today, petrosourced and hardly recycled.
Possible recycling paths for these materials consist in breaking covalent bonds from the reticulated resin though chemical (acids or strong oxydants) or thermal (cracking) treatments, leading to important energy and environmental costs. Despite of these disadvantages, such approaches are currently used to recover carbon fibers that represent most of composite cost, the resin matrix being lost in the process.
The post-doc position will consist in developing alternative resins to those currently used in composites and will be biosourced and recyclable. Biosourced monomers will be selected and/or modified and the recyclability will be obtained by incorporating dynamic bonds into the system. The formulation will be then optimized according to chemical and mechanical characterizations. Then, a foamed version of the resin will be developed and characterized.
The developed resins will then be used in the fabrication of fibre reinforced composites (carbon and/or natural fibers) that will also be characterized and optimized. At the end of the project, a composite prototype for the application in batteries will be fabricated using the developed knowledge.